PhD Studentship at the School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University College Cork

*PhD Studentship at the School of Computer Science and Information
Technology, University College Cork*

*Fully funded four-year PhD scholarship*

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship position available at the
School of Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT) within the
College of Science, Engineering, and Food Science (SEFS), of University
College Cork (UCC), Ireland.

The PhD student will focus on developing a system for analysing and
annotating Medieval Irish literary texts from the 13th century preserved in
later manuscripts (from the 15th to 17th century). We invite applications
from highly qualified candidates with a strong background in software
development and text processing and an affinity for transdisciplinary
research.

The position is full-time and fixed term for *4 years* starting from *1 April
2025*, or as soon as possible thereafter.

*The PhD Project*

The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary research team in
the IRC-funded project “*The Disappearing Text: Memory, Place, and Gaelic
Identities*” led by Dr Kevin Murray at the Department of Early and Medieval
Irish (SMG), College of Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Sciences (CACSSS),
UCC.

The PhD project is seeking to develop an interactive system which annotates
and collates different historical versions of the long medieval text, “*The
Dialogue of the Ancients*”, to facilitate the creation of a translated
publishable critical edition and an online interactive digital edition.
Specifically, this PhD will 1) develop and apply NLP and/or machine
learning methodologies to process Medieval Irish text 2) implement and
streamline the said methodologies in a web-based application 3) collaborate
with linguists and humanities researchers to ensure successful integration
of the methodologies and software into Medieval Irish research 4) present
and publish research findings at peer-reviewed international conferences
and in reputable journals.

We invite applications from candidates with a background in Computer
Science, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Machine
Learning, Software Development, or other similar fields and a strong
propensity for interdisciplinary research. In collaboration with the team
members from the Department of Early and Medieval Irish, the candidate is
expected to apply computational methods and develop software to facilitate
effective retrieval, processing, analysis, and interpretation of Medieval
Irish text.

More information about the School of Computer Science and Information
Technology is available on the school’s webpage: www.ucc.ie/en/compsci/

Details of the Department of Early and Medieval Irish can be found at
www.ucc.ie/en/smg/.

*Funding*

The PhD position is funded for four years. It includes a tax-free stipend
of €25,000 p.a. and tuition fees covered at the EU rate.

 *Eligibility criteria*

*Required qualification (essential)*

   - At least, a 2.1 honours undergraduate degree or MSc/MEng in Computer
   Science, Software Engineering, Computational Linguistics, Usability
   Engineering, or other related fields focusing on NLP, ML, and/or software
   development.
   - Proficiency with or a very good knowledge of Python and other relevant
   programming languages such as R, Java, C#.
   - Very good communication skills and an ability to work independently as
   well as in a multidisciplinary research environment.

*Additional qualities (desirable)*

   - Experience in NLP methodologies such as text preprocessing
   (tokenization, stemming, lemmatization), POS tagging, syntactic and
   semantic parsing, information retrieval and extraction, topic modelling,
   and/or machine learning approaches.
   - Willingness to tackle challenges related to historical textual data
   such as
      - handling archaic language and obsolete terms
      - contextualising, comparing, and aligning literary events from
      different medieval sources
   - Experience or familiarity with one or more NLP libraries such as NLTK
   and Spacy
   - Familiarity with scientific research methodologies and practices

*English language requirements*

   - Non-native English speakers should meet the minimum English language
   requirements for admission into a postgraduate programme:
   ucc.ie/en/study/comparison/english/postgraduate/
   <http://www.ucc.ie/en/study/comparison/english/postgraduate/>

 *Start date: **1 April 2025* (tentative/as soon as possible).

*To Apply:
                                   *

The application deadline is *2359 hrs* (*Irish Standard Time*) *Friday*, *28
February 2025*.

For the application instructions, refer to
https://www.ucc.ie/en/hr/vacancies/research/full-details-1869757-en.html

Enkhbold Nyamsuren
--
Lecturer in Computer Science
University College Cork